Mason Levinson, “‘Linsanity’ Contender for Word of the Year, American Dialect Society Says” (Bloomberg, Feb. 17, 2012)
The sports world’s newest craze has Lin-guists impressed.
“Linsanity,” the word that has encapsulated New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin’s rise from bench-warmer to international sensation in less than two weeks, has thrust itself into the American English vocabulary and been translated into Mandarin, making it a strong early candidate for 2012’s Word of the Year, according to the American Dialect Society.
“It certainly has had a meteoric rise in less than two weeks,” said Ben Zimmer, chairman of the society’s New Words Committee.
Read the rest here. (Related Word Routes column)